Anthony picture national geographics caterpillar
Fun Fact: The caterpillar gets its name from its "emperor-like" appearance due to its rich hues and bold patterns!: Unknown.
When nature artist Franz Anthony found a caterpillar on a leaf rearing both its ends up at him, he thought it kind of looked two weaver ants....
When nature artist Franz Anthony found a caterpillar on a leaf rearing both its ends up at him, he thought it kind of looked two weaver ants.
The color, the seemingly segmented body, the bulbs and butt-spots that look like ant eyes, and the leg-like protrusions from its body made it look like a pair of ants. But despite the effective mimicry, Anthony knew it was one long animal, and not an ant at all.
Anthony took a picture and uploaded it to iNaturalist, a website where you can report the different animals that you see, with a date and a location, to contribute to an archive of animal data.
If you don't know the species, the website will use image recognition software to guess what it is.
Proving just how effective the animal is at pretending to be two ants, the insect even fooled the artificial intelligence, or AI, the website was using.
iNaturalist responded to the uploaded image with "We're pretty sure it's in this superfamily: Ants and Wasps, Vespoidea." The top species su